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Pembrokeshire Place Names

How many years have you been driving past the signs on the outskirts of your town or village not knowing what the name means? Many of our Pembrokeshire place names have sprung from descriptive words of the area.

The place names across the National Park broadly divide into Welsh names and Anglo-Norman English names.

Llanrhian near St Davids, is a typical example of a Welsh name. Llan means church or enclosure and Rhian comes from the name of a 6th century saint, meaning 'church or settlement of St Rhian'.

Anglo-Norman settlements from the 11th century gave rise to many new places, often named after their founders and suffixed with ‘ton’ (town/farmstead). Thus Hodgeston actually means ‘Hodge’s Farm’ and was first mentioned in 1291.

Many hybrid names survive, garbled by mispronunciation, anglicisation and consequent misspelling. Lawrenny, for example, is a corruption of the Welsh Llawer-enni, meaning 'bed of the River Enni.'